The garden in the machine: Rethinking nature and history in the post-industrial landscape

Author

Terpeluk, Brett

Date

1998

Advisor

Bell, Michael

Degree

Master of Architecture

Abstract

Lying in the wake of accelerated technological advancement is a landscape of economic and environmental consequence. As older industrial facilities become obsolete, newer technologies look towards virgin land for growth. In turn, the industrial city, once the recipient of generous corporate taxation and stable work force, is saddled with social unrest, economic stagnation, and vast tracts of infrastructure-laden land. Such is the case with the vacated Bethlehem Steel plant in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
At the root of this thesis is a conviction that regeneration of this site needs to be approached as a multidimensional phenomenon which touches upon the organic, the economic, and the chemical. As such, a kind of petri dish can emerge where physical entropy and the erosion of memory coexist with economic and ecologic growth. This thesis attempts to define a new beginning by bridging the cleft between growth and decay. The history of this site, its entropic future, and the beginnings of a new history are conflated into a single continuum.